Morse code is made up of dots and dashes. How did telegraph operators keep from losing track of where one letter ended and another began?

Question

In the movies, morse code comes through so fast it’s hard to tell a dot from a dash. Hoe did they keep from getting lost?

In: 1001

Answer 1

Because you don’t hear the individual dots and dashes. After a while, you hear them combining into words. That’s how I learned it. It starts to sound like a monotone song.

Source: me. I used to be able to send and receive upwards of 20 words per minute. That was many years ago, and I’ve lost a good bit of it. But if I hear a snip go by in a movie or something, the words still jump out.